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Yeah, to clarify, the review is more implying naivety than straightforward advocacy. As in, the review believes Rand is "calling for an aristocracy of talents".
by soundwave106 9y ago
Yeah, to clarify, the review is more implying naivety than straightforward advocacy. As in, the review believes Rand is "calling for an aristocracy of talents". But in the real modern world, this is a naive viewpoint, and "the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship."
- api 9y agoThe naivete ultimately comes from the failure to define "talent." The talent that yields advancement (in nearly any large scale society, not just capitalism) is often deception and primate dominance gestures. An aristocracy of talents becomes an aristocracy of narcissists and sociopaths. Rand's heroes all look like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. People like that are notable because they are rare. Most of the ultra-wealthy more closely resemble Rand's villains. Real creators are too busy creating to play the kind of dominance games that most often lead to political and business success. You can succeed by creating, but doing so is many orders of magnitude harder than succeeding through manipulation and so you get a smaller pool of people who can pull it off.